"Well I think it looks better over here!" said a changeling in a small dwelling within the hive. He lowered his head and pushed the small table along the wall to the corner opposite of where it previous was.
"But that's where I planned to put the beds!" said his sister, who then moved to try and push it back. Her brother stood his ground and refused to let the table slide.
Decorating new rooms in the hive was tough.
The last thing the two changelings expected to see was a pair of Thaegan's children walk in, having thought they would still be fending off other curious changelings that didn't have any duties to fill. They stopped their bickering and turned to the two beings.
"Hello!" one of them said. He looked almost like his mother in shape, save for having brown, sharp teeth and a few spikes occupying the bald spot in his head.
"I'm Fie," he continued, "but I'm sure you already knew that."
"Yeah," the female changeling replied, "we were there when your mother introduced you."
The changelings looked to each other again and sighed. Might as well introduce themselves.
"I'm Connor," the male said, "and this is my sister Muta."
Muta forced a smile and nodded, irked that her brother hadn't let her introduce herself.
"It's nice to meet you!" Fie's brother said. He looked highly similar to his brother, save for a lack of hair and spikes and having lizard-like features to his face. "My name is Fly!"
The changelings nodded in confirmation. There was an awkward silence as Muta and Connor tried to come up with something to say. They really just wanted to get back to work, but didn't want to be too rude to Fie and Fly, who were smiling broadly at them. After several moments, Fly spoke up.
"So, what'cha doin' here?" he asked while breaking eye contact to look around the room. Some furnishings seemed to be incomplete, whereas others were strewn about randomly.
"Oh, we're decorating a room that was recently constructed," Muta said, making sure to beat Connor to the punch. "We're having some disagreements about what should go where."
Connor shot her a sarcastic look, but Fie and Fly didn't seem to notice. "Why is that chair missing two legs?" Fie asked, noting a chair in the corner that was indeed missing two legs.
"Well," Connor said, cutting off Muta, "some of the furniture wasn't made right and it kind of fell apart on arrival to the room. We're kind of having a hard time here, so..."
Connor politely motioned towards the door with his head, but neither Fie nor Fly seemed to take the hint.
"Oh! We can help!" Fie said excitedly. Connor and Muta looked at each other worriedly.
"I don't know if that's a good idea..." Muta said in a tone that reflected her expression.
"We're good at this stuff!" Fly replied. "Our mother always let us arrange a section of her home and she would go there when she needed to calm down about something!"
The changelings exchanged glances again.
"Just trust us!" Fie said as he and his twin began to move towards the chair.
Muta and Connor hesitated, not knowing whether to stop them, say something, or even ask what they planned to do. Maybe they really were decent at designing rooms. They decided to give them a chance, so they sat back and watched them as they picked the chair up and began to look around the room.
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Fie and Fly flew through the air and landed face-first on the floor outside of the room, both skidding a few feet before coming to a stop. Connor glared at them and closed the door, the sounds of Muta stuttering at the destruction she had just witnessed still in the background. The twins stood up and brushed themselves off.
"Well that could have gone better," Fie said, looking back towards the door.
"You'd think they had never seen creative improvisation before!" Fly added.
"I still think the lamp was a better choice for a makeshift chair leg than the vase was," Fie noted thoughtfully.
"You're the one that practically jumped on it when you sat down and broke the entire thing," Fly said. "I don't even know how you managed to break the desk across the room when you did that."
Fie teasingly glared as his twin. "I think you kicked one of its sides in when you accidentally broke the mirror by leaning on it."
Fly blankly stared for a moment before responding. "Oh, right," he said, remembering.
The two looked around again, seeing that no other doors in this residential section of the hive were open for investigation. The one they had just been thrown out of was obviously not an option as well...
"So where to next?" Fly asked.
"Hm... I'm still hungry. Want to go check out the food pods again?" Fie responded.
"Yeah!" Fly replied enthusiastically.
Fie and Fly set off back in the direction they originally came from, towards the food pods and kitchen areas.
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Fly raised his goat leg and took another bite out of the top of it, smiling. The changelings attending the pods were more than happy to offer them more food, but did seem a little shocked when they opted to take their snacks uncooked.
"So what all do you guys usually have in the pods?" Fie asked the changeling at the nearest pod, who was named Mod.
Mod made sure the pod was sealed and moved on to the next one a few feet away in the large circular room before replying. "Oh, usually just wildlife that our hunters find out in the mountains. That goat your brother is eating really put up a fight!"
"Haha, did he kick the hunters or something?" Fie asked, taking a bite out of the leg he had been provided with.
"Yeah, knocked a few out with headbutts, too. He was tougher than normal ones, a translator we sent with the hunters even caught him saying something about defending his home. We finally got him to calm down and come with us back to the hive when we agreed to leave his family alone."
Fly coughed and spat out a bit of the leg he had been eating. Fie and Mod looked over and saw him reach back into his throat to pick out a piece of bone that had gotten caught before happily continuing his little feast.
"Wait, so they can talk?" Fie asked.
"No, not like you or I do. That's what the translator was for, he's a specialist that can usually translate what animals are saying," Mod replied.
"Oh, okay," Fie said, taking another bite. "So you just slaughtered him when he got here?"
"We don't just kill him on arrival," Mod said, moving on to the next pod. "Because of his sacrifice, we took him to our dear queen so he would receive her blessing before dying. It's a thing we do, since he obviously loves his family a lot and that adds more to his value as a meal for us, so we honored him and what he did."
"Why's that?"
"We feed on love, so his sacrifice was kind of like doubling the nutrition."
Fie and Fly stopped eating for a second. This was new news.
"You eat love?" Fie asked.
"Yeah, sort of. It can provide us with some nutrition, though we do need to eat other things too. It's not like we have fangs for looks," Mod laughed. "The more love we eat, though, the stronger we become. It wears off after a while, though, so once we go a month or two without feeding on love our magic goes back to normal."
"I see," Fie replied. He took another bite, unperturbed by the knowledge that it was once a sentient being rather than just an animal like back at home.
Mod looked over to him. "Do you... usually eat your meat raw?" he asked.
Fie looked down at the leg for a second, chewing and swallowing before replying. "Nah, we usually cook our meat. Sometimes we do it while it's still alive, but usually we just kill it first. Every now and then, though, Fly and I find it nice to have a bit of rare meat, you know?"
Mod nodded, understanding that it was a taste thing. He himself found vegetables much more appealing when chopped up finely, even if they aren't treated in any other way.
Fly finished with his leg, having picked it clean to the bone in even that short period. "You have a lot of brothers and sisters... how do you feed them all?" he asked while looking around the room for a place to put the remains.
"Our territory is pretty big," Mod said, moving onto the next pod again. "You don't understand just how big this mountain range is."
"Heh, our mother had a big territory too!" Fly said happily, happy to have both found something in common between them and having found a pod designated for inedible remains.
Mod smiled. The ceiling shook, causing Fie and Fly to glance upwards.
"What was that?" Fie asked.
"Probably just the Devourer on a demolition job. Want to go watch?" Mod replied, looking upwards with them.
Fly hesitated for a moment. Mod noticed and said, "He doesn't want to hurt you guys anymore, it's safe."
Satisfied with the response, Fie and Fly set out to find their way to the floor above.